


The Color of Insanity

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Good Hunting [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: Gen, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8251087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "author's choice, author's choice, it rises from the deep" and the 2016 Shoobie Monster Fest Tentacular Spectacular. John's team takes on Lovecraftian horror in Massachusetts. He thought it would be something that rose from the deep. It was something that came out of space, and they need to send it back.





	

“Left, left!” Lorne said, pointing.

John swore and jerked the wheel hard. Luckily there was no one on the road anywhere near them, or there would have been one hell of a crash. Granted, John was driving a giant bus (he probably needed a CDL for it), and he would have won, but still.

The blue sign on the side of the road said _Welcome to Danvers_.

“You said we were going to Innsmouth,” John protested.

“I said take the next left.” Lorne sighed. “And I’m sorry. The Innsmouth thing was a joke. A joke that apparently you didn’t get.”

“I didn't,” John said shortly. He knew he was cranky and tired and taking it out on Lorne, but he really hadn’t been prepared for this new posting.

It wasn’t like any posting John had ever had before. He would be hard-pressed to call it military. Sure, Sam and Dean were also on active duty, but there was no discipline - no set curfew or wake-up, no set time for PT, no muster, not even set meal times. They rolled across the country on their massive bus, and they did what they wanted when they wanted, and no one seemed to remember anyone else's rank or title.

Sam and Dean didn’t seem to mind the lack of a schedule. Vala seemed to sleep endlessly, had since the demon hunt in Nebraska, only waking long enough to take her turn at the wheel. Miko and Rodney were awake at all hours, tapping away at their laptops, faces washed out in the blue-scale glow. John was pretty sure Lorne didn't sleep at all.

The only strict schedule they had going for themselves was driving. Dean drove, Sam navigated. Sam drove, Miko navigated. Miko drove, Rodney navigated. Rodney drove, Vala navigated. Vala drove, John navigated (and that had been downright frosty for four hours). John drove, Lorne navigated. Lorne drove, Dean navigated. And the cycle began again.

Miko and Vala, as the only women, got to sleep in the double bunk in the back. Ostensibly Rodney and Dean got the single bunks in the middle. Sam, who was too big to fit into any of the bunks, was supposedly assigned the other double bunk that the kitchen table and booth folded down into, and John, who was next tallest, got the couch, while Lorne slept in the passenger seat reclined as far as it would go. In actuality, all of the men rotated in and out of the two single bunks in the middle (except Sam, who took the couch, because him trying to cram into one of those bunks was asking for a permanent back injury), sleeping when they could.

John felt like he was floating through a fog. His sleep schedule was messed up. His body was messed up, because he hadn’t gone for his daily run. (Sam went running, apparently, as did Lorne. John had a standing invitation to join either of them.) And he still felt utterly horrible for what had happened in Nebraska.

It was Dean who'd given him the rundown on demons, during a stint when neither of them were driving or sleeping. Demons with yellow eyes were rare, more dangerous than demons with plain black eyes (crossroads demons had red eyes; no one wanted to run into a demon with white eyes). It was Sam who’d told John, hours later, in the dead of night, that a yellow-eyed demon had killed their mother when he was a baby. Four-year-old Dean had had to carry baby Sam from their burning home while their father tried and failed to fight the demon. Sam hadn't been kidding when he’d said he’d hunted all his life. John couldn’t imagine endlessly being on the road like this, all through childhood and again through adulthood.

“Ever read any HP Lovecraft?” Lorne asked, breaking through John’s ruminations.

“No. I’ve heard of his stuff, but it’s all horror, which was never really my genre. All I know about Lovecraft anything is that one song by Metallica.” John followed Lorne’s directions through the city and further north, into the rural areas where horror movies were probably filmed. There were decrepit wooden barns that looked abandoned or burnt out, crumbling brick houses set back along overgrown dirt lanes, rickety wooden fences, and tall, swaying grass.

“He based a lot of his stories in a fictional area of Massachusetts. He based the town Arkham on Salem, but he based the original Arkham Asylum on the Danvers State Hospital,” Lorne said. Like Miko and Sam, he was full of insane amounts of trivia, offered it up at a moment’s notice.

John glanced sidelong at Lorne, not sure if the guy was messing with him. “I thought Arkham Asylum was in Gotham City.”

“They borrowed it from Lovecraft.” Lorne smiled. “There are no new stories, Dean. Just retellings of old ones, and if you’re lucky, they’re retold better.” He gazed out the window. “You should read some Lovecraft, if you ever find yourself with spare time. It’s good stuff to know.”

“Lovecraft is fiction,” John protested.

Lorne cast him a look. “A whole lot of people say the same thing about the Bible, and yet you fought a demon.”

“The Bible isn’t the only book about demons, nor is Christianity the only religion that has them,” John countered.

“But the exorcism prayer you used is a Catholic one.”

“So the Catholic church was right and the rest of us are going to burn in hell?” John raised his eyebrows.

“No, it’s more complicated than that. But there’s truth to be found in the strangest of places.” Lorne consulted his smartphone, then said, “At the next intersection, take a right, and we should be at our destination.”

The destination was a two-story colonial farmhouse set beside a patch of the biggest pumpkins John had ever seen. He was pretty sure one of those pumpkins was bigger than a car he’d driven in college. John parked the bus on the shoulder of the country road out front of the house.

“Why are we stopping?” Rodney demanded.

“This is it.” Lorne heaved himself to his feet. The man was impeccably turned out, no matter the time of day. He didn’t always wear a full suit. Today he was wearing a button-down shirt, tie, waistcoat, and slacks, and he had an honest-to-goodness pocket watch on a chain. “Winthrop Farm.”

“Ooh, giant pumpkins. Just in time for Halloween!” Miko peered out the windshield, delighted.

“Hey, wasn’t there a movie about giant pumpkins one time?” Dean asked, standing behind her. John cleared his throat pointedly, and they moved aside to let him out of the driver’s seat. “It had Shannen Doherty, right?”

“Who? What?” Sam was cradling a mug of delicious-smelling coffee in his hands and looked only half-awake.

“You know, the chick from 90210.” Dean was an aficionado of all manner of pop culture, and not always the portions of it John would expect.

Vala lit up. “I saw that film! Miko showed me that film. The bloke in it looked like Lorne -”

Miko dug an elbow into Vala’s ribs, and she fell silent abruptly.

“Lorne, John, go speak to Farmer Winthrop,” Rodney said. “The rest of you - schlep for me.”

“Me?” John echoed.

“Interviewing 101.” Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t forget your badge.”

Lorne scooped up his jacket - a fine, heavy gray pea coat to stave off the autumn chill - and hopped down the steps of the bus. John scrambled to follow him, and together they opened the creaking gate and trod the dirt path up to the doorstep. The massive iron door knocker looked like either a lion or a demon, and John was hesitant to touch it, but Lorne rapped at the door like he’d done it a hundred times before. The house had been grand once, with columns and a portico over the door and an attached dutch barn, but the white paint was cracked and peeling, and it looked like the roof needed replacing. The glass windows were dusty.

“Are you sure someone lives here?” John asked in a low voice.

The front door swung open. “You from the CDC?” The grizzled old farmer who answered the door was wearing a flannel shirt under honest-to-goodness denim overalls. He had rough stubble on his jaw and his eyes were squinty and bloodshot, and by John’s guess he was pretty hungover.

Lorne reached into his pocket and drew out his leather wallet, flipped it open with a practiced flick of his wrist. “Yes, sir. I’m Dr. Evan Sheppard, and this my colleague, Dr. John Lorne.”

John barely managed to get his credentials out in time, and he was pretty sure he displayed them upside down.

Farmer Winthrop didn’t look too closely at either Lorne or John’s badges - which was good, because John was pretty sure Lorne had made up those names on the spot. Instead he grunted and said, “Took you long enough to get here.”

“Our team is outside getting ready to set up our equipment so we can take measurements and address the issue.” Lorne smiled, calm and polite and professional. John had met Afghani insurgents who were more friendly than Farmer Winthrop. “Please show us to the area of greatest concern.”

The area of greatest concern featured more giant pumpkins, a wheat field that looked like it was making an unseasonal go at a second harvest for the year with green shoots stretching toward the sky, and a herd of goats that - well. There was a reason so many horror stories and old fables and religions depicted goats and goat-like creatures as signs of evil. Something about the way the goats - all plump and chewing on grass - turned to look at John and Lorne at the same time was distinctly unsettling. Especially since a whole lot of the goats had extra facial features, and some of them had extra horns or other appendages.

Goat eyes were creepy enough. Three eyes on one goat was just wrong.

John closed his eyes and remembered the burning sands of Afghanistan.

“See here.” Farmer Winthrop gestured grandly. “Abundant fields. Giant pumpkins. Plump goats. But it’s all - wrong. CDC said they couldn’t help me at first, said if it wasn’t affecting humans it wasn’t their problem.”

“We’re here now,” Lorne said. He had such a pleasant, soothing voice. John wondered if he was any good at hypnotizing people.

John chimed in with, “If this started in plants and moved to animals, we want to know, in case it makes the jump to humans.”

Farmer Winthrop looked John up and down, nodded. “I knew at least one of you fancy learned folk had to have a lick of sense in you. See here.” He tugged up a green stalk of wheat and showed them how the roots were long and, of all things, purple. He cut open one of the massive pumpkins, and John and Lorne had to jump back as radioactive-green pumpkin guts spilled out at them. He reached for one of the goats, knife in hand, and Lorne stopped him. The three-eyed, four-horned goats spoke for themselves.

Farmer Winthrop explained further that everything had been all right a few months ago, and then he’d seen the Northern Lights, and his bounteous crop had gone from blessed to cursed. The only other person who might have any information was a kid who lived in the township on the other side of the wood, who was his irregular farmhand. Northot, the boy’s last name was. Farmer Winthrop called him North for short. First name was Axel or something stupid, like modern folk liked to inflict on their children - and the world - these days. He’d come around about four months ago, looking for work. Was a hard worker.

What followed was a lot more like John had imagined this posting would be. Everyone helped Rodney set up his gear beside the bus. An awning on the side of the bus unrolled to provide some shade for their workspace. Rodney and Miko set up generators while Sam, Vala, Dean, John, and Lorne collected samples of, well, everything. Goat poop. Pumpkin guts. Wheat. Soil. Water. Everything the goats ate. It was Dean, surprisingly, who knew the sample collection protocol the best, rattled off the procedure for chain of evidence and uncontaminated samples like he could rattle off his own name, so John stuck close to him. Farmer Winthrop leaned against one of the weather-beaten wooden fences and watched the proceedings for a while, but eventually he got bored and wandered back to his house, instructing Lorne to inform him as soon as they learned something.

Rodney and Miko supervised the running of the tests, which was mostly peering at things under microscopes, analyzing soil composition, and testing the substances for anything unusual. John and Sam helped prep the samples for tests. For such a tall young man with bear paws for hands, Sam was surprisingly dexterous at handling the delicate little glass slides and glass covers.

“I thought you were a lawyer,” John said.

“I liked science as a kid.” Sam shrugged.

“I’m not much one for astrophysics,” Vala said, watching Rodney fiddle with a microscope, “but do people usually see the Northern Lights this far east?”

“No. What he saw probably looked like the Northern Lights but wasn’t.” Rodney hummed thoughtfully. “Miko, take a look at this. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

Miko abandoned her own microscope and peered into Rodney’s. She said, “Oh dear.”

“What does that mean?” John asked, alarmed.

“Lorne! Get over here.” Rodney beckoned sharply. He nudged Miko aside and dragged Lorne in to peer at the microscope.

“Yeah, that’s not good,” Lorne agreed, once he’d seen. “You should let John have a look, so he has some field experience.”

“What do you think we’re hunting?” John asked. He peered into the microscope after Lorne stepped aside. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Some kind of cell structure dyed purple. He hadn’t looked down a microscope since honors biology in ninth grade. “You said Elder Gods, right? ‘It rises from the deep’ or something?” And then one of the cells - blurred. Vibrated. And started to glow, green and pink and ultraviolet and - it was two cells. It was four cells. It was -

John wrenched himself backward. “What the hell was that?”

“Not something that rises from the deep, I don’t think.” Rodney frowned. There was something lovely about his mouth that John couldn’t describe (wouldn’t ever dare attempt to describe, not out loud) when he frowned or smiled or spoke.

“What is it, then?” John pressed.

“We’ll have to figure that out,” Rodney murmured, distracted. He and Miko discussed taking measurements, recording results on one of the laptops.

“Come along, John,” Vala said. “Dean and I will teach you how to run a background check. We need to look at both Farmer Winthrop and his farmhand, Axel Northot.”

“It’s not that terrible a name,” Dean protested. He and Vala were huddled around one of the many laptops Rodney’s team possessed. Miko and Rodney seemed to claim ownership to specific laptops, but the rest of them were fair game.

For a man who was obsessed with mullet rock and made a lot of awful pop culture references, Dean was surprisingly good at using a computer to hack into the local DMV records to run background searches. Farmer Winthrop was William Putnam Winthrop and had a long and storied career of drunk driving, drunken disorderly conduct, and speeding tickets. He was the last of the Winthrops to own and operate Winthrop Farm, and apart from having a drinking problem and a lead foot, was an ordinary man.

Axel Northot didn’t exist. Nor did anyone with any variations of his name.

“Do we even know what this Northot kid looks like?” John asked.

“Lorne,” Dean began.

“On it.” Lorne climbed onto the bus, emerged a few seconds later with a sketchpad and a box of pencils. He headed up to Winthrop Farm.

“What’s he doing?” John watched him go. Now that he knew Lorne had a fake eye (and had apparently lost it during a previous encounter with the demon that had called itself Ba’al), he kept expecting to see Lorne limp or otherwise give some indication of his disability, but there was none.

“Getting us a sketch of the kid calling himself Northot.” Dean showed John how he had hacked into the Essex County DMV, and John, as a practice exercise, hacked into the DMV databases for several of the surrounding counties in case there was any version of Northot in those databases.

Vala had lost interest while Dean was walking John through decimating low-level state government firewalls, started poking around on her phone. By the time John had successfully hacked and searched the three adjacent counties for any signs of Axel Northot (or anyone with variations on the name ‘North’ who was in the age range to be called ‘kid’ by Farmer Winthrop, who looked to be in his late forties), Lorne had returned with a sketch of the anonymous farm hand. Dean was showing John how to use the portable scanner to upload the sketch so they could attempt facial recognition when Vala ceased playing with her phone.

She peered at the scan of Lorne’s sketch. “He’s beautiful.”

By Farmer Winthrop’s description, his young farmhand North was a male, somewhere between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, with scrupulously symmetrical features, a full mouth, long lashes, and dark hair feathered around his face.

“If you’re into that whole...symmetrical thing,” John said dubiously.

“That’s a problem,” Vala continued, turning her phone around. “The lad wasn’t lying when he said his name was Northot. Except he’s not really a lad.”

John, Dean, and Lorne all leaned in to peer at her phone at the same time and knocked heads. Dean swore and stumbled back, hand pressed to his forehead. Lorne said nothing, looked pained. John saw stars for a moment. When his vision recovered and the pain receded, Miko was in the midst of them, showing Vala how to transfer the open web page on her phone to the browser open on the laptop.

“You all right?” Lorne asked.

“Fine,” John muttered. “Just fine.” He was so out of his depth, he had no idea why he’d agreed to taking this posting. Except the alternative had been the rest of his mortal existence in Leavenworth.

“See here,” Vala said. “Northot.” She pushed the laptop toward the three men.

They were very careful of each other’s personal space when they leaned in. Apparently Northot was ‘a mysterious entity’ related to ‘Shub-Niggurath’ and ‘Yog-Sothoth’, according to the obscure lore website Vala had found.

“When I asked Farmer Winthrop what North looked like,” Lorne said, “he told me North had green eyes and golden skin, but he wasn’t sure what color his hair was.”

“So?” Dean asked.

John scanned the web page, which was designed in lurid green font on a black background. “So apparently Northot, whatever he or it is, has color-changing hair, or a glowing halo of an unknown color.”

“Is this guy even real?” Miko asked.

“Farmer Winthrop seems to think so,” Lorne pointed out.

“He’s so alcoholic it’s a wonder he hasn’t been pickled alive,” Rodney said, and John started, surprised at Rodney sneaking up on him. “That being said, what’s going on in his crops and livestock is literally out of this world, so I’m not writing him off as crazy.”

“What do you mean, out of this world?” John asked.

“Like I said, not so much _rises from the deep_ so much as -”

“Color out of space!” Sam cried, eyes wide and bright.

Dean coughed into his hand, _Nerd_.

“Something like that,” Rodney said patiently.

Sam ducked his head, sheepish, but he couldn’t contain his childish glee at the prospect that this Color out of space was responsible for what was going on.

Rodney continued, “The Northern Lights that Farmer Winthrop saw were probably the Color. Either this Northot creature is the forerunner or intermediary between the Color and the farm, or it’s a product of the Color.”

“What if Northot is the result of the Color infecting a human?” Miko asked.

“Then we need to move fast.” Rodney scanned the web page Vala had pulled up.

“What’s the plan?” John asked.

“We stake out the farm, see if Northot shows up, and capture him,” Dean offered. “If he’s the source of the crazy on the farm, we can neutralize him. If he’s the final iteration of the crazy jumping to humans, we can analyze him. It’s a win either way.”

“How do we capture something related to ‘Shub-Niggurath’?” John raised his eyebrows.

“Lorne?” Rodney turned to him.

“On it,” Lorne said. He lifted his chin at John. “C’mon. Let’s go do some research.”

Research was John reading an HP Lovecraft short story on one of the communal Kindles while Lorne read an obscure tome (also on one of the communal Kindles) on summoning Elder Gods and related entities.

“The Color went back to space,” John said when he finished.

Lorne, looking like something out of an old Norman Rockwell painting, legs crossed at the knee, Kindle resting on his palm, glanced up. “Pardon?”

“The Color went back to space. We should send the Color back to space.”

“Indeed, but how?”

John thought back on what he’d read. “I...don’t know.”

“Here’s the part about hunting that both drives Rodney insane and is also the best thing for him.” Lorne smiled, set the Kindle aside. “We experiment. We don’t know how to send the Color back to space, and we don’t know how or if Northot is connected to the Color. We do know how to summon Shub-Niggurath, an Elder God, and contain it and anything summoned with it, and we know how to banish demons and similar entities. So -”

“So we stake out the farm, trap Northot, study him, and then banish him,” John said.

Lorne nodded. “Exactly.” He stood up, and John followed him, and together they reported to Rodney.

It was Rodney and Miko who informed Farmer Winthrop, in complicated scientific terms, half of which were probably made up, that they needed to camp on his grounds overnight. He seemed drunker than before but glad someone was taking him seriously, told them to take as long as they needed, and then they arranged the stake-out. Their stake-out rotated the same as their driving. Because John and Evan had driven last, they got to sleep first and longest, and John didn’t mind.

It was Rodney who woke John for his stake-out shift. John had barely rolled out of the bunk and pulled on clothes when Rodney shed his shoes and skimmed down to his underwear, crawled into the bunk John had just vacated, and fell asleep.

Vala, who’d done the first half of her stakeout in the little sedan parked on the opposite side of the field from the bus (the sedan they towed behind the bus so they could get around whatever town they were hunting in), came to take her place on the bus (and in the warmth). John went to hunker down in the sedan, which was full of coffee, store-bought pastries, and a pair of binoculars. Halfway through John’s shift, Vala would wake Lorne, and Lorne would take John’s place, and John would take Vala’s place.

John could see his own breath when he exhaled, had to use the special streak-free chamois to clear the condensation off the windshield every now and again. Someone had thought to include a lovely hand-knitted afghan in the sedan so whoever was in the sedan could stay warm. Lorne, Dean, Sam, and Vala had spent forever over dinner (at a diner in the nearest township) designing a key (like the Key of Solomon used to trap demons) to hold Northat. Over burgers, fries, and old-fashioned milkshakes, the four of them wasted almost an entire container of napkins, sketching and planning and correcting until they’d agreed on a variation of the Talisman of Yhe, interwoven with a souped-up devil’s trap that could theoretically hold a yellow-eyed demon.

John, out of sympathy for the waitress, left a hefty tip when they finally left the diner, demonic-looking sigils scattered and crumpled in their wake.

Lorne, Dean, and Sam had installed the key at several points around Winthrop Farm, aiming to lure Northot into it when he appeared, and now John was shivering in the sedan, hoping Northot appeared.

No one appeared. Not for a whole hour and a half. John had drunk probably more than his fair share of coffee when movement in the trees startled him. He reached for his binoculars, but the person crossing the wheat field near one of the traps was none other than Lorne. Lorne as John had never seen him before, wearing soft sleep pants and a dark, long-sleeved shirt that also looked worn and soft, hair sleep-mussed. Was he coming to relieve John? He was half an hour early. Of course, Lorne was the sort of person who’d do this early, as a courtesy to either Vala or John or both.

John knew something was wrong when someone else stepped out of the trees. John peered through the binoculars, and yep, the man walking toward Lorne matched his sketch to a T, slender and pretty despite his threadbare flannel shirt and work jeans. His hair was - dark, John was pretty sure, but not sure what color, or, wait, no, it was pale, but the shadows -

John tapped his radio. “Sheppard for Lorne.”

There was no response.

“Lorne, can you hear me?”

Still no response.

John drew his pistol and eased the driver’s side door open silently, slid to his feet. This was stealth, this was battle. This he knew. He tapped his radio. “Sheppard for Dean, we have a situation.” If Lorne had relieved Vala, Dean was up next.

There was a grunt, then Dean said, “Winchester. Sit rep?”

“Northot’s here, but so is Lorne. Something’s gone wrong. I need backup.” John circled around the pumpkin patch, goat pen, and wheat field, making sure to cross each of the other traps, marking them with his scent in case Northot gave chase. Northot was gliding through the wheat field toward Lorne, who was standing statue-still, and it was going to be a scene out of a horror movie, it was going to -

John shouted. “Lorne!”

Lorne didn’t respond. Neither did Northot. Northot glided closer and closer to Lorne, like a moth to a flame.

“Lorne!” John shouted again. He paused, aimed his pistol at Northot. Was Lorne hypnotized? Paralyzed? Catatonic? Northot slid closer, closer. John curled his finger around the trigger, ready to fire.

And Northot drew Lorne close and kissed him.

John faltered.

What had started off as a scene out of a horror movie became a scene out of a romance. In the silvery moonlight, Lorne and Northot looked like something out of a painting, pressed close, arms around each other, Lorne’s hand tangled in Northot’s hair, Northot’s hand splayed on Lorne’s ribs. Northot was taller than Lorne, and Lorne had tipped his head back to accept the kiss, like a blossom seeking sunlight, and Northot -

Dean burst out of the bus, charged across the wheat field. “Get your damn hands off him!”

John broke into a sprint, abandoning his circular course and heading straight for Lorne. He’d pin Northot from the other side.

Lorne broke the kiss. He snarled and spun around, drew his gun. John stopped short. Lorne’s eyes were wild.

“Lorne?” John asked. “It’s me, John.”

Dean leveled his gun at Northot. “Lorne’s possessed or something. North Snot put the whammy on him.”

John raised his hands in a gesture of surrender but didn’t put down his gun. “Lorne, step away from the creepy guy with the fluffy hair. Okay?”

Northot was statue-still this time.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” John said to Lorne, keeping his tone calm and even.

Dean shot Northot.

Northot blinked out of existence in a flash of light and impossible color. John squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, but the afterimage was burned on his eyelids, a thousand flashbulbs, images in ranges of the spectrum John was sure he wasn’t supposed to be able to see.

There was another snarl and a roar. John opened his eyes, blinked rapidly. Dean was wrestling a kicking, struggling Lorne to the ground. Vala and Sam came dashing out of the bus seconds later, and both of them piled on top of Lorne and Dean.

“Get him back onto the bus,” Vala said. Between her, Dean, and Sam, they managed to get Lorne, who was spitting and writhing like a feral cat, back onto the bus. Miko, wrapped in a fluffy robe and wearing bunny slippers, blinked at them owlishly from behind her massive glasses. Rodney, wearing boxers and a t-shirt that read _I’m With Genius_ , stood shivering just inside the bus.

Vala found a folding chair. Sam and Dean wrangled Lorne onto it, and then they broke out honest-to-goodness chains and shackles and padlocks, the links of which were engraved with arcane sigils, and chained Lorne to the chair.

“What happened?” Rodney demanded.

John scrubbed a hand over his face. “I - was watching, from the sedan, and I saw Lorne. I knew his watch was next, thought maybe he’d relieved Vala half an hour early or something.”

“It’s a very Lorne thing to do,” Valal admitted.

“When I tried to hail him over the radio, he didn’t answer, and then Northot appeared and kissed him -”

“Kissed him?” Sam echoed.

Dean nodded. “Yes. It was very romantic. Not the point! Northot put the whammy on Lorne, and he vanished when I took a shot at him, and now -” He gestured at Lorne.

Lorne was wriggling in the chains, hissing and snarling unintelligibly. There was something uncanny in his eyes, both of his eyes, even though one of them was fake.

“What do we do?” Vala asked. “Is he possessed?”

“We need to capture Northot,” Rodney said, “and sever the link.”

“Do you understand what he’s saying?” Miko asked Vala.

She shook her head. “No. I know ancient languages, but Cthonic and similar dark speech is out of even my realm of experience.” Her expression was sorrowful. “I’m sorry, Evan. I know the real you is in there. We’ll set you free as soon as we can, all right?” She leaned down so she was eye level with him.

Lorne surged to his feet, chair and chains and all.

It was the last thing John remembered.

When he woke, hours later, it was either still dark or dark again. His head ached. Sam, Dean, Rodney, and Miko were slumped over various pieces of furniture like carelessly-strewn pieces of clothing across a teenager’s bedroom floor. Vala was sprawled across the floor, blood dripping down her face. The bus was a wreck. And Lorne - Lorne was a mess. He was shirtless, covered in paint - all kinds of colors - and every available surface was propping up canvases. Canvases smeared in at least double the colors on Lorne’s skin and in his hair (and who knew Lorne, buttoned-up Lorne, tidy, prim Lorne, was covered in tattoos, from collarbone to elbow to waist and possibly lower, swirls and sigils and seals and symbols, inked into his skin like a delicate webbing of lace).

Lorne was standing in front of a half-empty canvas, moaning and swaying, smearing paint on the canvas with his bare hands. He wasn’t just smearing the paint on it, though. John had to blink, to try to focus. Lorne was scratching symbols into the paint, but John couldn’t make them out. Staring at them too long made his head hurt. Made him think of titanic, monolithic buildings deep under the sea. Of icy, glass cities far out in space. Of dying stars and sinking volcanoes. Of writhing tentacles, of thousands of goat eyes. Of a massive, blackened tree that dripped blood instead of sap and whose heart beat and beat and beat.

John went to push himself up, but then the door of the bus swung open, and Northot glided up the steps and - holy hell, he didn’t have feet, he had hooves, like a deer, like a faun, like -

Lorne wailed and shrank back from Northot, and then Northot was on him, smoothing a hand through his paint-spattered hair, stroking a hand up his paint-smeared skin. John watched the scene through his lashes, pretended his eyes were closed, felt along the floor for his gun. Northot was kissing Lorne again, and Lorne went still in his grasp.

When Northot pulled back, breathing hard, like he’d run a race - and in person he was beautiful, and inhuman, and his hair was _all of the colors_ \- he cupped Lorne’s face in his hands. “Finish it, please.”

And then Lorne, like a marionette with a new puppeteer at his strings, turned back to the canvas and kept painting.

When the painting was finished, Lorne let his hands fall to his sides, a marionette abandoned. Northot took the painting and carried it off the bus. He came back for the next, and the next, and the next. He ignored Lorne, who remained statue-still, just like last night.

He was finished using Lorne, John realized. John waited till Northot was off the bus - the intervals between his collecting paintings were irregular - and opened his eyes, searched for his gun. He saw it, lunged for it.

Vala got to it first.

Northot stepped onto the bus, and Vala unloaded the entire clip into him.

Lorne screamed.

Dean, Sam, Miko, and Rodney jerked awake. John and Vala pounced on Northot’s corpse.

“To the trap!” Vala yelled, and John helped her drag the corpse (she had the hooves, he had the wrists) off the bus. They hauled the body to the nearest trap, made sure it was utterly inside the circle, and then Vala began to chant the words Lorne had found to send Shub-Niggurath or whatever its name was away.

Lorne came stumbling off the bus, sobbing and pleading. Sam, Dean, and Rodney restrained him. His words were meaningless, but John knew that sound. He was brokenhearted.

What happened next John could never really describe. (Later, for his report, he settled on _There was a tear in the fabric of reality, and the body vanished into it_ , and Sam, who was apparently the best at writing reports, said it was more than adequate.)

Lorne fell to his knees, dry-heaving into the grass.

“Evan?” Sam asked.

Lorne batted him away. “What did you do?” His voice was hoarse, like he was swallowing ground glass.

“We got rid of it,” Vala said.

Lorne shook his head. “No. He was trying to help. He was trying to send the Color away. I was helping him. I -” He retched some more.

Miko ran back to the bus, reappeared with a bottle of water, which she handed to Lorne.

“What now?” John asked.

“How was he going to send the Color away?” Rodney asked.

“We were going to call its mother.” Lorne rinsed his mouth, climbed slowly to his feet.

“How?” Rodney pressed.

Lorne turned and trudged back toward the bus. “I’ll show you. Help me.” He directed them to arrange his nonsensical paintings around the triangle of the goat pen, the pumpkin patch, and the wheat field. Rodney and Miko took measurements of the arrangement to preserve it for further research and study. No matter how Rodney pressed, Lorne couldn’t explain what he was doing or why he knew how to do it.

“You don’t understand. You can’t see. Can you hear the colors? Can you smell the sounds? Can you -?” Lorne shook his head. He set the final painting in place, and everyone gathered close to him, nervous.

And he began to chant. The sounds were nonsensical, surely not language, but not nearly as flowing as they’d been before Vala had killed and banished Northot. It was like Lorne was struggling to recite something he’d taken great pains to memorize, and he was enunciating the syllables very carefully.

The next part, John could describe very well, though it made no sense. Everything began to turn the dust. The wheat field. The giant pumpkins. The goats. It all crumbled and died, like bad special effects from a vampire movie. Only this was real, and live, and vivid. Something was moving in the dust, through the dust, moving the dust. When it reached the center of the sigil created by the paintings, it transformed into light. Into color. John could see why Farmer Winthrop had called it the Northern Lights, but the name was inadequate, because the Northern Lights didn’t have the color that waves made when they crashed upon the diamond shores of an alien beach on a distant moon, didn’t have the sound sunlight made as it danced across a woman’s skin, didn’t have the smell of aeons passing in the center of a black hole, didn’t have the colors of time and happiness and spikiness and wistfulness and longing.

The light shot toward the sky, a reverse lightning strike. The light carried higher, a reverse meteor.

And higher and higher and higher until it faded into a single, colorless, multicolored, rainbow, blank slate star.

And was gone.

Lorne sank to his knees with a howl.

Vala knelt to comfort him, but he buried his face in his hands, heaving great sobs.

“Evan, what’s wrong?” Vala asked. 

Lorne lashed out at her, and Sam shouted, “Hey, leave her alone!”

Something bright winked across the dustbowl remains of the field, like a miniature shooting star. It struck a tree, and there was a sound like breaking glass.

Lorne lifted his head, and John’s stomach roiled at the sight of his empty eye socket.

“It is done,” Lorne said. He picked himself up and stumbled back onto the bus.

Miko went to follow him, but Rodney caught her shoulder. “No. Let him be.”

“What the hell just happened?” John demanded.

“The Elder Gods,” Sam said softly.

“The doesn’t explain a damn thing!”

“We’ll figure it out as we write our AARs,” Dean said firmly.

Rodney nodded his agreement. “Right now, let’s clean up.”

Farmer Winthrop emerged from his farmhouse as the sun was rising, as the last of the equipment was packed away, as the modified devil’s traps were deconstructed. He eyed the dusty, lifeless space where his livelihood had once been, and he said, “Figures. I knew I oughta sell the place.”

John assured him that his troubles were over, the disease had been dealt with, but they’d had to burn everything to stop it from spreading.

“Don’t smell any smoke. Didn’t see any flames,” Farmer Winthrop pointed out.

“Fire isn’t the only thing that burns,” Rodney said, and he tugged John back to the bus. Vala was sleeping once more. Lorne was nowhere to be seen. Sam and Dean were driving, and Rodney and Miko were typing away at their laptops.

When Lorne finally reappeared, the bus was halfway back to the bunker. He looked as neat and dapper as ever, and he was wearing an eye patch, and he said nothing, not even to Vala, for the rest of the trip. Everything he wore was black, white, or grey for the next week.

John read _At the Mountains of Madness_ and wondered how long any of them could keep this up.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Devil's Dancefloor" by Flogging Molly. Also inspired by Stargate Atlantis: Impressions.


End file.
